Joe Bonamassa at the Royal Albert Hall

If you are anything like me, you might be wondering the same thing - who is Joe Bonamassa? Until late last week, I had never heard of him. A friend of mine sent me and invitation to an online file sharing depository and said I should give this guy a listen.

As soon as I finished listening to the first chapter, I was hooked. I couldn't wait to listen to the rest of the stuff. Trouble was, the way the video was rendered (downloadable, no streaming) I had to download each chapter before I could start listening. Not very ideal - so I decided to do something about it, but more about that later.

Now you may be a big time guitar aficionado, and already you may be very familiar with Joe's body of work, but if not I think you should get familiar. When I first started listening, I did some research, and I have to agree, Joe Bonamassa is probably the best guitar player that you have never heard of... in fact, he may be one of the best living guitar players period.

That is the main reason for my post. After doing my research, I learned that Joe was going to be concentrating on touring the US this year (2011) instead of playing mostly European venues. My thought was that if I could post an article with his 2009 concert at Albert Hall, it might just introduce a whole new group of fans to his music. It would be a really good thing for him and the music world. If you think so too, it would be great if you would share this link with your friends. Maybe you could share it on Facebook or even Tweet about it.

Chapters & Timestamps

01 - Road to Albert Hall - 0:00

09 - Further On Up the Road - 36:29

17 - Your Funeral My Trial - 1:09:50

02 - Django - 2:38

10 - High Water Everywhere - 42:08

18 - Blues Deluxe - 1:14:06

03 - Ballad of John Henry - 6:07

11 - Sloe Gin - 47:16

19 - Story of a Quarryman - 1:23:23

04 - So It's Like That - 12:54

12 - Intermission - 55:38

20 - The Great Flood - 1:28:40

05 - Last Kiss - 15:49

13 - BB King - 56:01

21 - Just Got Paid - 1:36:45

06 - So Many Roads - 23:08

14 - Lonesome Road Blues - 57:24

22 - Mountain Time - 1:48:12

07 - Stop! - 29:29

15 - Happier Times - 1:01:59

23 - Asking Around for You - 1:59:05

08 - Introducing Erci Clapton - 35:11

16 - Paul Jones - 1:08:51

What does CloudPlayer have to do with Joe Bonamassa?

It might not be obvious when you first landed on this page what this site is even all about. Let me explain. CloudPlayer is a standard WordPress plugin which helps you add video to your posts and pages. It does three main jobs - 1) it makes adding videos to your posts and pages incredibly simple, 2) it makes your website traffic proof and allows visitors to have a great viewing experience, and 3) it makes the video secure.

That last part is very important. What it means is that the video cannot be stolen. It can't be downloaded. It can't be used by anyone else. I'm hoping that since it is secure and can't be stolen, that Joe won't mind that I'm doing some promoition of his video.

One thing that I would like to point out, the video is a squosh out of sync and it isn't the very best quailty. Biggest reason for that, it has been rendered and re-rendered at least 3 times in order for me to be able to post it online for you to stream. So please don't hold the video quality degredation against CloudPlayer… with permission from the artist and access to the original quality material, CloudPlayer could be playing this concert back in 1080P HD video quality. As it is, the play back and random access of any spot on the video is rather remarkable. The file is a massive 2.8 GB and the video is over 2 hours and 10 minuts, yet you can randomly access almost any spot on the video almost instantly - pretty freaking cool!

How Does CloudPlayer Work?

CloudPlayer used Amazon's S3 & CloudFront services to create let you create a secure, streaming CDN (content distribution network) of your own as well as letting you add videos (and audios) to your posts and pages in a very simple way. In it's simplest form the code for adding the video above could have been done as simply as:

[cpp_cfplayer]
cp_file:filename.ext
[/cpp_cfplayer]

You can find out more about CloudPlayer and how you can use iton your site by visiting this free presentation Don't Lose Millions.